Stories of Ourselves Volume 2 (Cambridge (CIE) IGCSE English Literature): Exam Questions

How does Schreiner powerfully convey the narrator’s emotions and realisations in The Woman’s Rose?

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How does Ellison vividly convey the narrator’s struggles and frustrations in The Black Ball?

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In what ways does Anand vividly portray the narrator’s pride and disillusionment in The Gold Watch?

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In what ways does Atwood vividly portray the narrator’s anxieties and state of mind in When It Happens?

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How does Ballard vividly convey the narrator’s fascination and unease in The Man Who Walked on the Moon?

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Explore the ways in which Kincaid portrays memory and self-discovery in A Walk to the Jetty.

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How does Gardam powerfully convey the boy’s experiences and emotions in Showing the Flag?

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In what ways does Forna movingly explore love and memory in Haywards Heath?

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How does Gunesekera strikingly portray deception and misunderstanding in Fluke?

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Read this passage from the short story ‘The Woman’s Rose’, and then answer the question that follows it. The narrator, a girl of fifteen, is spending her last evening in a small town where she and another young woman have been rivals for the attention of the men. Here she arrives at a party given in her honour.

It was midwinter. There was nothing in the gardens but a few dahlias and chrysanthemums, and I suppose that for two hundred miles round there was not a rose to be bought for love or money. Only in the garden of a friend of mine, in a sunny corner between the oven and the brick wall, there was a rose tree growing which had on it one bud. It was white, and it had been promised to the fair haired girl to wear at the party.

The evening came; when I arrived and went to the waiting-room, to take off my mantle, I found the girl there already. She was dressed in pure white, with her great white arms and shoulders showing, and her bright hair glittering in the candle-light, and the white rose fastened at her breast. She looked like a queen. I said “Good-evening,” and turned away quickly to the glass to arrange my old black scarf across my old black dress.

Then I felt a hand touch my hair.

“Stand still,” she said.

I looked in the glass. She had taken the white rose from her breast, and was fastening it in my hair.

“How nice dark hair is; it sets off flowers so.” She stepped back and looked at me. “It looks much better there!”

I turned round.

“You are so beautiful to me,” I said.

“Y-e-s,” she said, with her slow Colonial drawl; “I’m so glad.”

We stood looking at each other.

Then they came in and swept us away to dance. All the evening we did not come near to each other. Only once, as she passed, she smiled at me.

The next morning I left the town.

I never saw her again.

How does Schreiner make this such a moving and surprising moment in the story?

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Read this passage from the opening of the short story ‘Nick’, and then answer the question that follows it.

There dwelt in a small village, not a thousand miles from Fairyland, a poor man, who had no family to labour for or friend to assist. When I call him poor, you must not suppose he was a homeless wanderer, trusting to charity for a night’s lodging; on the contrary, his stone house, with its green verandah and flower-garden, was the prettiest and snuggest in all the place, the doctor’s only excepted. Neither was his store of provisions running low: his farm supplied him with milk, eggs, mutton, butter, poultry, and cheese in abundance; his fields with hops and barley for beer, and wheat for bread; his orchard with fruit and cider; and his kitchen-garden with vegetables and wholesome herbs. He had, moreover, health, an appetite to enjoy all these good things, and strength to walk about his possessions. No, I call him poor because, with all these, he was discontented and envious. It was in vain that his apples were the largest for miles around, if his neighbour’s vines were the most productive by a single bunch; it was in vain that his lambs were fat and thriving, if some one else’s sheep bore twins: so, instead of enjoying his own prosperity, and being glad when his neighbours prospered too, he would sit grumbling and bemoaning himself as if every other man’s riches were his poverty. And thus it was that one day our friend Nick leaned over Giles Hodge’s gate, counting his cherries.

‘Yes,’ he muttered, ‘I wish I were sparrows to eat them up, or a blight to kill your fine trees altogether.’

The words were scarcely uttered when he felt a tap on his shoulder, and looking round, perceived a little rosy woman, no bigger than a butterfly, who held her tiny fist clenched in a menacing attitude. She looked scornfully at him, and said: ‘Now listen, you churl, you! henceforward you shall straightway become everything you wish; only mind, you must remain under one form for at least an hour.’ Then she gave him a slap in the face, which made his cheek tingle as if a bee had stung him, and disappeared with just so much sound as a dewdrop makes in falling.

How does Rossetti vividly introduce the character of Nick in this passage?

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